今日、昼ごはん時に急がしすぎましたが日記帳を書きませんでした。 今から１２月６日まで、毎日日本語を勉強したい。
Hmm, it's kinda a late and I want to go to sleep, so that will have to do.
One new word mind you, or at least one new version of a word I thought I knew. 日記帳（にっきちょう） means 'diary'. No new grammar point as I have not had a chance to look at one today.
木曜日, 11月 06, 2008
JLPT RIP?
It appears that the venerable Japanese Language Proficiency Test is to be no more!
Well, actually it has another year of life left (2009 will be the last one) before it is rippped up, burnt and replaced with... the revised JLPT.
Big deal I hear you cry. Well, there is a significant change afoot - the revised JLPT, which will still only test receptive skills but will get a funky new prefix to distinguish it from the old one, will be available in 5, count 'em (five) levels; again numbered from hardest to easiest; N1 (the hardest) will come in slightly tougher than the current JLPT 1-kyuu. At the easier end of the spectrum, N5 will be a direct, like-for-like replacement of the current 4-kyuu.
Well, plus ca change - the difference comes in the middle. Right in the middle actually. The new N3 will be an intermediate level, bridging the gulf between the current 2-kyuu and 3-kyuu.
For many students this leap is quite a challenge - the step up requires a three-fold expansion of kanji knowledge and requires an awareness of four times as much vocabulary. After the fairly moderate increase from 4-kyuu to 3-kyuu (ha! get me, I haven't managed yet have I?) this can present quite a daunting challenge unless you are in country (I know a few people who have tried and failed 2-kyuu here in the UK) though that's not to lessen the achievement of those who do manage it in Japan - it's still the same exam, after all.
Which brings us to the other change that will occur at the same time: biannual testing. Yes, for those who do fluff either of the harder level (N1, N2) exams, the opportunity will be there for a retest in July, though only for those in Japan, or its neighbours Korea, China and Taiwan.
Thrilling stuff. Let's just hope that I'm in a position to apply for N3 by 2010, the inaugral year...
Well, actually it has another year of life left (2009 will be the last one) before it is rippped up, burnt and replaced with... the revised JLPT.
Big deal I hear you cry. Well, there is a significant change afoot - the revised JLPT, which will still only test receptive skills but will get a funky new prefix to distinguish it from the old one, will be available in 5, count 'em (five) levels; again numbered from hardest to easiest; N1 (the hardest) will come in slightly tougher than the current JLPT 1-kyuu. At the easier end of the spectrum, N5 will be a direct, like-for-like replacement of the current 4-kyuu.
Well, plus ca change - the difference comes in the middle. Right in the middle actually. The new N3 will be an intermediate level, bridging the gulf between the current 2-kyuu and 3-kyuu.
For many students this leap is quite a challenge - the step up requires a three-fold expansion of kanji knowledge and requires an awareness of four times as much vocabulary. After the fairly moderate increase from 4-kyuu to 3-kyuu (ha! get me, I haven't managed yet have I?) this can present quite a daunting challenge unless you are in country (I know a few people who have tried and failed 2-kyuu here in the UK) though that's not to lessen the achievement of those who do manage it in Japan - it's still the same exam, after all.
Which brings us to the other change that will occur at the same time: biannual testing. Yes, for those who do fluff either of the harder level (N1, N2) exams, the opportunity will be there for a retest in July, though only for those in Japan, or its neighbours Korea, China and Taiwan.
Thrilling stuff. Let's just hope that I'm in a position to apply for N3 by 2010, the inaugral year...
土曜日, 8月 02, 2008
Time to buckle down (127 days to go)
The season for JLPT applications is nearly upon us. The notification on my phone to alert me on the first day that SOAS are ready to receive my carefully completed, practised and triplicated exercise in bureaucracy is just itching to send my ケイタイ in to frenzy of eager buzzing and ringing. (Seriously, check that first link - never has the JLPT looked so forbidding and sexy in one go!)
Having faffed and fiddled so much that I failed to get my MSc off the ground this year, I'm left with a yawning chasm in my learnability so I am prepared to send this this exercise properly this year.
So it was that I came back to Anki, the marvellous little app that earlier this year did so much for my vocab. And boy, was it keen to seen me. I've had a little session just now, but you can see from the graph how much I've had to make up, and I will still have to make up over the next couple of weeks, just to get things back to where they were...
My lapsed time has left me with a mountain of cards to climb over. All the cards shown to the left of the spike are ones that have been missed - some by more than three weeks! Still, it is easy enough to put a couple of sessions a day to pick this up. Answering them once isn't the end of it of course, some will be postponed quite a distance, but I will fail a fair percentage of these and they will then reappear early in the cycle, making things quite heavy going for at least a couple of weeks.
My future profile at present makes for fun viewing...
The gradient shows a steep relearning curve. The line shows how many cards I would have on that day if I didn't study until then. Despite my efforts this morning, if I don't log on again until Thursday I would quickly be back at 150 cards. Better not slack this time.
Having faffed and fiddled so much that I failed to get my MSc off the ground this year, I'm left with a yawning chasm in my learnability so I am prepared to send this this exercise properly this year.
So it was that I came back to Anki, the marvellous little app that earlier this year did so much for my vocab. And boy, was it keen to seen me. I've had a little session just now, but you can see from the graph how much I've had to make up, and I will still have to make up over the next couple of weeks, just to get things back to where they were...
My lapsed time has left me with a mountain of cards to climb over. All the cards shown to the left of the spike are ones that have been missed - some by more than three weeks! Still, it is easy enough to put a couple of sessions a day to pick this up. Answering them once isn't the end of it of course, some will be postponed quite a distance, but I will fail a fair percentage of these and they will then reappear early in the cycle, making things quite heavy going for at least a couple of weeks.My future profile at present makes for fun viewing...
The gradient shows a steep relearning curve. The line shows how many cards I would have on that day if I didn't study until then. Despite my efforts this morning, if I don't log on again until Thursday I would quickly be back at 150 cards. Better not slack this time.
木曜日, 3月 06, 2008
Better luck next time?
So the result is in. And the word is not good.
45.25% Hardly my finest hour.
However, it's not all bad. Check out that best result! Listening. WTF?! That was the one I was most concerned about. And 65 is a pass. It's just a shame the rest of the scores were so damn bad.
So, I'm back on the vocab trail trying to work on the words that caused me a problem trying to read the last time round. Sure, that was the plan last time round, but I'm well pleased to realise that the tricky bit wasn't so bad.
To help things go better, I'm going to make a point of picking up a few of the old exam paper books while in Japan. With the exchange rate they should be less than half the price they are in the UK. Huzzah!
45.25% Hardly my finest hour.
However, it's not all bad. Check out that best result! Listening. WTF?! That was the one I was most concerned about. And 65 is a pass. It's just a shame the rest of the scores were so damn bad.
So, I'm back on the vocab trail trying to work on the words that caused me a problem trying to read the last time round. Sure, that was the plan last time round, but I'm well pleased to realise that the tricky bit wasn't so bad.
To help things go better, I'm going to make a point of picking up a few of the old exam paper books while in Japan. With the exchange rate they should be less than half the price they are in the UK. Huzzah!
木曜日, 1月 03, 2008
木曜日, 10月 25, 2007
An approach based on sound practice
By profession I create learning material - in fact one of the key reasons for having this blog is to put in to practice one of my firmly held beliefs (born out of reading the literature, rather than simply because I believe it). A few approaches that I would always bear in mind when creating material:
I have some practical experience of this as it relates to the study of Japanese. What was most striking about my last trip to Japan was home much more intelligible everything was.
In the period since I'd lived in Japan I had actually been studying Japanese - something I hadn't done a great deal at the time as I hadn't really intended to remain connected to the country forever. Subsequently, getting on trains, walking the streets or looking at things to buy, the strange squiggles, markings and etchings that had silently passed me by the first time suddenly began talking to me. With a hundred or so kanji under my belt everything seemed to make a little more sense. I had a hook upon which to hang a few words and with that I was able to unlock vastly more than I knew, simply because the few that I knew gave me a lever on the possible pronunciation.
That said, it recently occurred to me that if I was to get through the remaining 三級漢字 for the test I would need to find a different approach: trying to learn the strokes, the meaning, on on-yomi and kun-yomi, plus some of the main words a kanji appears in fails to meet a few of the key criteria I mention above.
SO I set myself the goal of, in twenty five days, learning all the meanings at least (too little, too late) as a peg upon which to build.
Today I stumbled on Heisig and his "Remembering the Kanji" approach, thanks to Carlie, who looks to be about to try out his system. It wasn't the first time I'd seen his name - a challenge was laid down by Tae Kim a while back, which I thought nothing of.
Kim's criticism is that the kanji in and of themselves don't mean anything in Heisig. Heisig simply introduces the 1,945 jouyou kanji by meaning and strokes. Japanese readings don't even get a look-in until volume 2 of his book!
I can see why Kim's sceptical - it is possible to 'learn' all the kanji you need in everyday life in Japan without learning a single word of Japanese - but I can also see, from a professional stand point, very compelling reasons why Heisig's approach makes a lot of sense. Heisig argues that one reason that Chinese and Korean students find learning Japanese easier is that they are familiar with the meanings for kanji, even if they don't know the language itself. His approach levels that playing field, or so he claims.
I think the system is worth closer scrutiny for several reasons:
There are problems with it of course:
If you're interested, you can download a sample of the first 250 or so kanji covered, and at the Reviewing the Kanji website you can track your progress and see useful stats about your progress (if you visit my other blog, Learning Rocks, you'll see why the application of IT to learning at there site, and their attempt to leverage the online community of learners, is so exciting to me).
- it is important not to create cognitive overload by trying to learn too many things simultaneously
- breaking things in to chunks helps us manage our learning
- spaced repetition is the key to long term memory creation
- taking in information can be assisted by using prior knowledge as a building block
I have some practical experience of this as it relates to the study of Japanese. What was most striking about my last trip to Japan was home much more intelligible everything was.
In the period since I'd lived in Japan I had actually been studying Japanese - something I hadn't done a great deal at the time as I hadn't really intended to remain connected to the country forever. Subsequently, getting on trains, walking the streets or looking at things to buy, the strange squiggles, markings and etchings that had silently passed me by the first time suddenly began talking to me. With a hundred or so kanji under my belt everything seemed to make a little more sense. I had a hook upon which to hang a few words and with that I was able to unlock vastly more than I knew, simply because the few that I knew gave me a lever on the possible pronunciation.
That said, it recently occurred to me that if I was to get through the remaining 三級漢字 for the test I would need to find a different approach: trying to learn the strokes, the meaning, on on-yomi and kun-yomi, plus some of the main words a kanji appears in fails to meet a few of the key criteria I mention above.
SO I set myself the goal of, in twenty five days, learning all the meanings at least (too little, too late) as a peg upon which to build.
Today I stumbled on Heisig and his "Remembering the Kanji" approach, thanks to Carlie, who looks to be about to try out his system. It wasn't the first time I'd seen his name - a challenge was laid down by Tae Kim a while back, which I thought nothing of.
Kim's criticism is that the kanji in and of themselves don't mean anything in Heisig. Heisig simply introduces the 1,945 jouyou kanji by meaning and strokes. Japanese readings don't even get a look-in until volume 2 of his book!
I can see why Kim's sceptical - it is possible to 'learn' all the kanji you need in everyday life in Japan without learning a single word of Japanese - but I can also see, from a professional stand point, very compelling reasons why Heisig's approach makes a lot of sense. Heisig argues that one reason that Chinese and Korean students find learning Japanese easier is that they are familiar with the meanings for kanji, even if they don't know the language itself. His approach levels that playing field, or so he claims.
I think the system is worth closer scrutiny for several reasons:
- the whole book is broken up in to manageable(-ish) "chunks" of between 10 and 130 kanji
- they are ordered so that what you have learnt will help to make sense of what is to come
- the system relies on spaced repetition
- you are only focusing on learning two things for each kanji - strokes and meaning
There are problems with it of course:
- learning all 1,945 jouyou kanji is all well and good, but at my level I am unlikely to need them, or encounter them to ensure learning continues
- maintaining spaced repetition going forward would require testing yourself at 60 a day, everyday, just to make sure you view every one once a month
- motivation is likely to be tricky as it would probably be unclear at times exactly where the benefit was - without an equally intensive vocabulary campaign to follow or run concurrently you may never need many of the kanji for years to come, if at all...
If you're interested, you can download a sample of the first 250 or so kanji covered, and at the Reviewing the Kanji website you can track your progress and see useful stats about your progress (if you visit my other blog, Learning Rocks, you'll see why the application of IT to learning at there site, and their attempt to leverage the online community of learners, is so exciting to me).
土曜日, 10月 06, 2007
Is there any point?
For some reason I got it in my head that the cut off point for JLPT applications was mid-October. It wasn't. It was yesterday.
But no fear - this isn't a recent discovery - just one that I made last weekend.
I duly got the application away recorded delivery on Monday with, hopefully, enough of a margin to get it in by Friday, 6pm. But then you can never be sure with the terminal patient, the Post Office. And sure enough I may have been scuppered by the strike that has brought the entire postal network to a grinding halt mid-week.
So now I have just to wait...
But no fear - this isn't a recent discovery - just one that I made last weekend.
I duly got the application away recorded delivery on Monday with, hopefully, enough of a margin to get it in by Friday, 6pm. But then you can never be sure with the terminal patient, the Post Office. And sure enough I may have been scuppered by the strike that has brought the entire postal network to a grinding halt mid-week.
So now I have just to wait...
水曜日, 10月 03, 2007
Getting back in the groove
Trying to pick up where I not so much left off as dropped out altogether is proving far more difficult that I thought it would be.
I have a subscription to JPod101 once again, but as I sort of found the last time round, the sheer volume of material there now, and of course there's more again, means it is quite intimidating. With my BlueTooth link seemingly on the blink, the best thing about this, and ironically the free bit too, the audio, is largely denied to me.
What's more worrying is that mentally I can't even seem to engage with the enormity of the task, but while I have more freedom at work from the stressful stuff - I'm working to help other people with their stress and that is personally a lot easier - I really need to knuckle down. That said, I do find that reading ドラえもん is reaping benefits - I am recognising more words in the stories these days (at last) and they provide useful queries for my language exchange on the weekend.
But now I'm going to dust off a few old friends:
Right then, I'm off to Kim's, after new thing for the day...
I have a subscription to JPod101 once again, but as I sort of found the last time round, the sheer volume of material there now, and of course there's more again, means it is quite intimidating. With my BlueTooth link seemingly on the blink, the best thing about this, and ironically the free bit too, the audio, is largely denied to me.
What's more worrying is that mentally I can't even seem to engage with the enormity of the task, but while I have more freedom at work from the stressful stuff - I'm working to help other people with their stress and that is personally a lot easier - I really need to knuckle down. That said, I do find that reading ドラえもん is reaping benefits - I am recognising more words in the stories these days (at last) and they provide useful queries for my language exchange on the weekend.
But now I'm going to dust off a few old friends:
- Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar Guide - for me the best ordered guide to grammar (and not just online, but full stop)
- J-Gram - widely considered the most comprehensive J-grammar resource, including by Tae Kim, himself a contributor I believe
- Meguro Language Centre - one of my lottery winning dreams is to enroll with MLC for a few months, quite simply if it's not here it's not in the test
- JLPT Study Page - from the Ronseal school of product marketing
Right then, I'm off to Kim's, after new thing for the day...
Thing for the Day
さ - a filler word meaning 'right then' or 'ok', used to acknowledge the other speakers and signify a change of topic.
火曜日, 10月 02, 2007
An exam in two months?
Okay, so I've sat on my arse and barely done a jot to prepare for the impending san-kyuu exam. That's smart.
I've completed my application form and I'm ready to send it off. But just look at it! What is this? The 1980s? Christ, it could be the 1960s. If ever there was an event crying out for a slick, automated online application programme, surely a once a year, simultaneous global exam is the ideal subject for one? But no, instead we have a carbon copy quadruplicate form. Insane
I need to get it away tomorrow. If I don't, there's every chance I will bugger up my application for this year - the deadline is Friday...
So how will I kick start my revision? With this - Berlitz' Basic Japanese.
It was a gift from Kazue for my birthday last month.
It's entirely in romaji. Initially I dismissed it as being below me but what I've found is that it has two very good reasons for using it:
Note, for all you linguist out there, I just made up those adaptive and structural learner definitions.
I've completed my application form and I'm ready to send it off. But just look at it! What is this? The 1980s? Christ, it could be the 1960s. If ever there was an event crying out for a slick, automated online application programme, surely a once a year, simultaneous global exam is the ideal subject for one? But no, instead we have a carbon copy quadruplicate form. Insane
I need to get it away tomorrow. If I don't, there's every chance I will bugger up my application for this year - the deadline is Friday...So how will I kick start my revision? With this - Berlitz' Basic Japanese.
It was a gift from Kazue for my birthday last month.It's entirely in romaji. Initially I dismissed it as being below me but what I've found is that it has two very good reasons for using it:
- being in romaji I can read it very quickly. I'm okay with kana and those kanji I'm familiar with, but my lack of practice means I'm slowed by an unexercised brain and poor vocabulary. Reading in romaji removes one of those barriers and allows me to quickly cover all the ground I've lost in double quick time.
- Berlitz have a very good approach to creating material. The dialogues are wholly integrated - they build on the last and cement earlier learning in a way that JBP, for example, just do not. Perhaps it is the shortness of the chapters that allows this.
Note, for all you linguist out there, I just made up those adaptive and structural learner definitions.
月曜日, 8月 06, 2007
Panic On
There are just 118 days until the next Japanese Language Proficiency Test day, 2 December 2007 (thanks to MLC for that calculation).
I had once again let time slide and thought that perhaps I would ignore sankyu for another year. Then, out of the blue, comes a query as to whether "we" are on for studying for it together. "We" means my friend Rachel who has just returned to the UK after a little more than 2 years in Osaka.
Well, what do I do? I have rather let my studies slide for another year, but perhaps this shot across my bows should spur me in to action?
It costs around £50 to take the test in London at SOAS - the only test centre in the UK. That's not a huge sum, but would still smart if it was an outright waste of money because I know there is no point in sitting the exam. Hmm.
I had once again let time slide and thought that perhaps I would ignore sankyu for another year. Then, out of the blue, comes a query as to whether "we" are on for studying for it together. "We" means my friend Rachel who has just returned to the UK after a little more than 2 years in Osaka.
Well, what do I do? I have rather let my studies slide for another year, but perhaps this shot across my bows should spur me in to action?
It costs around £50 to take the test in London at SOAS - the only test centre in the UK. That's not a huge sum, but would still smart if it was an outright waste of money because I know there is no point in sitting the exam. Hmm.
木曜日, 4月 26, 2007
On the JLPT trail (again)
It's the front half of the year still, so time to make some vague promises to myself to get JLPT3 again. That'll be four years then...
This time I have a half-assed agreement with my buddy Rach to work together to achieve this. Not a bad idea. In keeping with my way of doing these things, my study buddy is in Japan - well, she is at the moment - I think she returns soon after two years over there.
I'm going to be interested in this as she won't be living near me, but we are going to be wokring together to achieve our goal. Collaborative learning online is the sort of thing that usually gets me exercised at Learning Rocks, but it will be interesting to see if I can bring a newbie along with me - I mean, she doesn't even have a blog...
This time I have a half-assed agreement with my buddy Rach to work together to achieve this. Not a bad idea. In keeping with my way of doing these things, my study buddy is in Japan - well, she is at the moment - I think she returns soon after two years over there.
I'm going to be interested in this as she won't be living near me, but we are going to be wokring together to achieve our goal. Collaborative learning online is the sort of thing that usually gets me exercised at Learning Rocks, but it will be interesting to see if I can bring a newbie along with me - I mean, she doesn't even have a blog...
水曜日, 4月 11, 2007
A true challenge
I struggle with Japanese. Not so much the language itself, it's fairly logical, though I'd be the first to suggest I'm not so good at it.
No, I struggle to make the time for the study it requires. I labour and tussle with my time and never seem to make time for what is arguably the most important change I could make to my domestic arrangements. In this I suffer in learning the vital parts of the language that I need to be able to communicate - my vocabulary is terrible and without it, for all my understanding of the various tenses and conjugations, I understand very little of it.
In all my time (about six years now) I have only achieved the very modest level of JLPT4. Pathetic.
So it is some admiration that I look at my friend Tony of Englishman in Japan fame who is just now embarking on a crash course in Japanese at university in Kanazawa. He is expected to reach JLPT2 this year. A chum from my time in Japan, Nigel, struggled to get 2-kyuu after a year of living there, and four years of study at university here in the UK, so I appreciate it is one hell of a challenge that Tony has had thrown at him.
I'll be watching his progress closely.
No, I struggle to make the time for the study it requires. I labour and tussle with my time and never seem to make time for what is arguably the most important change I could make to my domestic arrangements. In this I suffer in learning the vital parts of the language that I need to be able to communicate - my vocabulary is terrible and without it, for all my understanding of the various tenses and conjugations, I understand very little of it.
In all my time (about six years now) I have only achieved the very modest level of JLPT4. Pathetic.
So it is some admiration that I look at my friend Tony of Englishman in Japan fame who is just now embarking on a crash course in Japanese at university in Kanazawa. He is expected to reach JLPT2 this year. A chum from my time in Japan, Nigel, struggled to get 2-kyuu after a year of living there, and four years of study at university here in the UK, so I appreciate it is one hell of a challenge that Tony has had thrown at him.
I'll be watching his progress closely.
火曜日, 1月 23, 2007
Facing the challenge!
Okay, so I need an external motivator to get me to study. How about this one?
I've signed up for the free san-kyuu kanji email service from the Japanesepage.com, - this will operate as my external force - and I am entering them in to my brilliant kanji drilling tool from Declan (see Nihongojira passim).
This will force me to at least get exposure to the basic kanji, without my own useless sense of study gold-plating ("can't move on till I understand, dammit!") interfering to block my progress. In fact, as I signed up to the list a few weeks ago, I will have to more than keep up! I need to go faster to catch up!
I've signed up for the free san-kyuu kanji email service from the Japanesepage.com, - this will operate as my external force - and I am entering them in to my brilliant kanji drilling tool from Declan (see Nihongojira passim).
This will force me to at least get exposure to the basic kanji, without my own useless sense of study gold-plating ("can't move on till I understand, dammit!") interfering to block my progress. In fact, as I signed up to the list a few weeks ago, I will have to more than keep up! I need to go faster to catch up!
水曜日, 11月 29, 2006
More quality materials
For Nihongojira it's my desire to plug only the finer sites that can help in the quest to learn.
Another one I have found, thanks to those wonderfully contributors on the JPod forum is this little place: the JLPT Study Page.
It is specifically geared to the most widely (only?) recognised exam for students of Japanese. Lots of useful references and a system that links to the best grammar resource on the web, Tae Kim's, mean it is a great place to check your level. I'm pleased to see it also references Jim Breen's JDic and Meguro Language Centre.
That's pretty much all the places I recommend too.
Another one I have found, thanks to those wonderfully contributors on the JPod forum is this little place: the JLPT Study Page.
It is specifically geared to the most widely (only?) recognised exam for students of Japanese. Lots of useful references and a system that links to the best grammar resource on the web, Tae Kim's, mean it is a great place to check your level. I'm pleased to see it also references Jim Breen's JDic and Meguro Language Centre.
That's pretty much all the places I recommend too.
登録:
投稿 (Atom)