I've finally started to get settled here. I've got my apartment, some furniture, a few dishes and my main appliances (refrigerator, washing machine, and microwave/oven/toaster). I've got running water and gas and electricity. Unfortunately I've yet to get internet, although that should be coming soon (I hope).
For a quick refresher, I'm studying computer science at Keio University's SFC campus; specifically media databases. I've always been very interested in Parallel and Distributed Computing, so any research topic I choose will have elements of that in it.
I am studying quite a bit of Japanese, although its all on my own right now. The Japanese classes at my campus are too low level, and I'd have to commute 90 minutes on my only free weekday to my school's Mita campus in order to get in a higher level class.
Right now I'm studying Japanese through a couple of different methods. I'm still working on memorizing transitive and intransitive verb pairs. I've started using a website called "Quizlet". I tried it out a while ago and thought it had potential, but in these last few months it feels like it's matured enough that I can use it on a frequent basis. It's essentially a free flash card website with some "social networking" built in. People can share their sets with others, as well as compete in games and so forth. The transitive/intransitive set that I've put together and am studying right now is JIM: Transitive - Intransitive. I'll continue to add vocabulary to it and create other sets as well. One annoying problem with using flash cards to memorize words is that some words have very similar or identical meanings. Sometimes there are small nuances in meaning which I can add to the flashcard to help differentiate, but its a very difficult process (especially since I may not know the nuances). For instance, one verb I'm trying to learn is "あらわす" (arawasu) which means "to show". In this case, the meaning is more like "to reveal" or "to express" according to the online dictionaries I've looked at. The problem is that I learned that "みせる" (miseru) means "to show" a long time ago. I keep inputting みせる and getting marked as incorrect on the website :/ (old habits die hard I guess)
Additionally, I'm reading an online Japanese newspaper (AsaGaku) while using the Perapera-kun Firefox plugin. There are probably better newspapers out there (this one seems related to teaching Japanese to Japanese children. I found it while trying to find a Japanese children's newspaper), but this newspaper has plenty of vocabulary for me to study. I have a large vocabulary that isn't linked to kanji in my mind, so I find that as I am trying to read the newspaper by mousing over each word using the Perapera-kun plugin, I find vocabulary which I know in hiragana but not through kanji. I've already started recognizing words in everyday life on signs and posters whose kanji I've learned through the aforementioned online newspaper reading method.
If anyone can point me towards some easier online reading material written in Japanese (maybe some that has been written with children in mind) that would be much appreciated :)
Showing posts with label studying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label studying. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Thoughts on Japanese
I'm surprised how well I've been able to communicate with people right off the bat. It's exciting to think where I'll be in just a month or two's time. I'm focusing on studying sentence structures and kanji right now.My most intensive area of study right now is on learning the readings of kanji. Right now the book I'm using is called Essential Kanji by P.G.O`Neill. I've had it for a while but was always a little intimidated by it. Now that I've had a lot more experience with the Japanese language, it's making for a great resource. I still don't feel confident in my kanji at all, so I'm starting from the beginning. Of course I know a few of them pretty well by now, and I'm already 35 kanji into the book. I'm sure I'll hit the ceiling of my pretty-well-known-kanji soon and the speed at which I pick up new ones will fall drastically. As I mentioned before, I'm memorizing the readings of each kanji as well as writing each about 20 times.
At the same time I'm working on using transitive and intransitive verbs correctly, as well as some of the sentence constructs surrounding them. I'm also brushing up on older sentence structures that I haven't used for a while and therefore am rusty in their proper usage. I've brought the Japanese in Mangaland books with me, and packed some other ones to be shipped to me once I have a permanent address.
At the same time I'm working on using transitive and intransitive verbs correctly, as well as some of the sentence constructs surrounding them. I'm also brushing up on older sentence structures that I haven't used for a while and therefore am rusty in their proper usage. I've brought the Japanese in Mangaland books with me, and packed some other ones to be shipped to me once I have a permanent address.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Where did I study?
This has happened to me a couple times, but it was only this most recent time that I actually remembered the word. I was at a teppanyaki restaurant yesterday, and my chef was a Japanese man in his mid twenties. It was fun practicing my Japanese with him, but the conversation started out a little rough. He asked me where I studied Japanese, but did so using the word まなぶ (manabu) which I was unfamiliar with (and whose subtleties I'm still unsure of). According to my handy online dictionaries, the meaning is to study (in depth); to learn; to take lessons in. I've been taught benkyousuru (to study), and narau (to learn) both in class and through reading textbooks. I don't ever remember running across this word before in those contexts.
I'm not positive, but from the context it sounded like the verb implied where did I first learn Japanese. It might just be the case though that I was focusing so much on an unfamiliar verb, that I didn't hear some of the rest of the sentence. When I replied that I was studying with a private tutor, it seemed to be an incorrect response :) I guess I'll ask my teacher this week about manabu. I can't believe that in 2.5 years I've never learned that word before.
I'm not positive, but from the context it sounded like the verb implied where did I first learn Japanese. It might just be the case though that I was focusing so much on an unfamiliar verb, that I didn't hear some of the rest of the sentence. When I replied that I was studying with a private tutor, it seemed to be an incorrect response :) I guess I'll ask my teacher this week about manabu. I can't believe that in 2.5 years I've never learned that word before.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Kanji studying misgivings
I continue to have misgivings about my kanji studying methodology. I've bounced around between several different methodologies, and even gave up on studying kanji for a while as I focused again on grammar constructs. I'm still convinced though that my ability to learn the language will greatly increase if I am able to read books, and for that I need to "know" kanji.
First a little background on kanji. Each kanji can have a variety of meanings, but those meanings all relate to each other. I'm going to use "ishi" (石) as my example, since it pretty much means "stone". Now, in Japanese kanji can have several different "readings". While the kanji itself means stone, depending on what word that kanji shows up in, it might sound like seki,shaku, koku, or ishi. The kanji finds itself in such words as oil, stone, pebble, coal, jewel. You can see how those words are all related to stones. My dilemma is that just knowing the meaning of a kanji doesn't necessarily help. When I'm trying to read a word that is composed of two or three kanji, even if I know the meaning of the individual kanji, that doesn't give me how to read the word, or what word the three kanji together form. As I mentioned above, if I see 石, it could be read in one of several different ways. Do I study the kanji, the meaning, and memorize all of the readings? Will those readings help me by themselves? I've used a methodology whereby instead of studying just the readings, I've actually memorized words that the kanji shows up in. In that way it's more like memorizing vocabulary than individual kanji. I automatically know how to read the word since I memorized that group of kanji's reading.
While that is a great way to eventually learn how to read, it also seems very inefficient. I could learn a word for every one of 石's readings (in this case four words). This means that I would put my effort into learning how to write 石, the meaning of 石, four words which contain the different readings of 石, those word's meanings, and how to read those words. Instead of doing all of that, I could just learn how to write 石, the meaning of 石, and the four readings related to it. Is the latter approach the better way of learning kanji? Is it too artificial to be useful for reading? In the latter case, I might know all of the readings for a kanji when I come across it in a word, but I won't necessarily know which reading is correct, or the meaning of the word. I think I will try to switch to the latter method in the hopes that being familiar with a lot more kanji will let me more easily match up words in kanji whose readings I don't know with vocabulary that I memorized without learning the kanji.
First a little background on kanji. Each kanji can have a variety of meanings, but those meanings all relate to each other. I'm going to use "ishi" (石) as my example, since it pretty much means "stone". Now, in Japanese kanji can have several different "readings". While the kanji itself means stone, depending on what word that kanji shows up in, it might sound like seki,shaku, koku, or ishi. The kanji finds itself in such words as oil, stone, pebble, coal, jewel. You can see how those words are all related to stones. My dilemma is that just knowing the meaning of a kanji doesn't necessarily help. When I'm trying to read a word that is composed of two or three kanji, even if I know the meaning of the individual kanji, that doesn't give me how to read the word, or what word the three kanji together form. As I mentioned above, if I see 石, it could be read in one of several different ways. Do I study the kanji, the meaning, and memorize all of the readings? Will those readings help me by themselves? I've used a methodology whereby instead of studying just the readings, I've actually memorized words that the kanji shows up in. In that way it's more like memorizing vocabulary than individual kanji. I automatically know how to read the word since I memorized that group of kanji's reading.
While that is a great way to eventually learn how to read, it also seems very inefficient. I could learn a word for every one of 石's readings (in this case four words). This means that I would put my effort into learning how to write 石, the meaning of 石, four words which contain the different readings of 石, those word's meanings, and how to read those words. Instead of doing all of that, I could just learn how to write 石, the meaning of 石, and the four readings related to it. Is the latter approach the better way of learning kanji? Is it too artificial to be useful for reading? In the latter case, I might know all of the readings for a kanji when I come across it in a word, but I won't necessarily know which reading is correct, or the meaning of the word. I think I will try to switch to the latter method in the hopes that being familiar with a lot more kanji will let me more easily match up words in kanji whose readings I don't know with vocabulary that I memorized without learning the kanji.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Update
My original tutor has returned to Japan, and I didn't have one for a while which limited my studying. I was just focusing on memorizing vocab and the associated kanji while I was tutorless. I used Craigslist again to find another tutor, and she is really great. I'm studying several things in parallel at the moment:
The JLPT or Japanese Language Proficiency Test seems to be widely known, but somehow I hadn't been exposed to it up until now. There are four levels of proficiency, and people take tests created by the Japanese government to determine what proficiency they are at. I'm not too interested in taking the test, but it's another thing that can help my studying become more structured. For now I'm just learning the kanji that I'd need to take the test at JLPT level 4 (the lowest). Right now I'm studying off of a worksheet that has 120 characters on it. The sheet also includes the readings of the kanji that I have to memorize. Fortunately I already knew most of the first 75. I need to study more regularly so that I can figure out how many kanji per week I can memorize.
I've often wondered how important sentence structures are compared to vocabulary. When I'm at Japanese class, I'll frequently try to use some convoluted sentence to say something, and then I get corrected by just being taught new vocabulary that means what I was trying to say. This leads me to believe that learning vocabulary is more important than sentence structures, but of course you need both if you are to communicate well. A very important benefit of studying sentence structure is that to do so you need to form sentences! This means that the act of actually speaking Japanese is being studied, and not just memorization/recollection.
Because of studying sentence structures, I realize that I need to speak Japanese more often. We were studying "n desu" and "hazu", forming sentences that encompass the entire range of usage scenarios for these sentence structures. There were times when it took me 10 seconds just to parse all of a sentence's information and say the Japanese equivalent of the English sentence I was translating. I could tell that my teacher frequently thought I just didn't know the vocabulary, however it was just me fitting everything together in my head. I'm just not used to speaking Japanese, and that's something that I have to practice outside of class somehow. I feel like if I were to move to Japan, my ability to form Japanese sentences from English thoughts would quickly catch up with the rest of my Japanese language ability at least.
- Kanji vocabulary from the book Kanji in Mangaland
- JLPT kanji worksheets
- Weekly sentence structures
The JLPT or Japanese Language Proficiency Test seems to be widely known, but somehow I hadn't been exposed to it up until now. There are four levels of proficiency, and people take tests created by the Japanese government to determine what proficiency they are at. I'm not too interested in taking the test, but it's another thing that can help my studying become more structured. For now I'm just learning the kanji that I'd need to take the test at JLPT level 4 (the lowest). Right now I'm studying off of a worksheet that has 120 characters on it. The sheet also includes the readings of the kanji that I have to memorize. Fortunately I already knew most of the first 75. I need to study more regularly so that I can figure out how many kanji per week I can memorize.
I've often wondered how important sentence structures are compared to vocabulary. When I'm at Japanese class, I'll frequently try to use some convoluted sentence to say something, and then I get corrected by just being taught new vocabulary that means what I was trying to say. This leads me to believe that learning vocabulary is more important than sentence structures, but of course you need both if you are to communicate well. A very important benefit of studying sentence structure is that to do so you need to form sentences! This means that the act of actually speaking Japanese is being studied, and not just memorization/recollection.
Because of studying sentence structures, I realize that I need to speak Japanese more often. We were studying "n desu" and "hazu", forming sentences that encompass the entire range of usage scenarios for these sentence structures. There were times when it took me 10 seconds just to parse all of a sentence's information and say the Japanese equivalent of the English sentence I was translating. I could tell that my teacher frequently thought I just didn't know the vocabulary, however it was just me fitting everything together in my head. I'm just not used to speaking Japanese, and that's something that I have to practice outside of class somehow. I feel like if I were to move to Japan, my ability to form Japanese sentences from English thoughts would quickly catch up with the rest of my Japanese language ability at least.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Kanji Studying
I finally feel like I have an effective kanji studying technique. I've been using the Kanji in MangaLand book lately. It has the most logical progression, and the most useful vocab I've found in any kanji book so far. Up till now I've always struggled with the various aspects of studying kanji:
I write the word in kanji on one side of a notecard, and the hiragana reading plus the English meaning on the other side. I look at the kanji side, and make sure I know both the English meaning of the word, and the hiragana reading of it. I then write the kanji a few times in a notebook and go on to the next one. If I don't know the meaning of a word, then I make sure to review that one more often. I tend to memorize in batches of 6-12 words, and then move on to the next batch. As I accumulate words that I have lots of trouble with, I'll memorize a batch of the trouble makers separately from the rest.
I've found that studying this way increases my vocabulary, allows me to memorize stroke order and the various readings of a kanji, and the individual meaning of a kanji. Frequently, vocabulary includes kanji that I am studying, and kanji that I have not yet studied. I try to learn the stroke order of all the kanji in a word I am studying, although I don't feel the need to learn the meaning or the readings of kanji that I haven't gotten to yet. I can usually discern some meaning anyways, and I figure I will get to that kanji in the future.
The only disadvantage to this method is how long it takes to get through a group of kanji, since I am not only memorizing the kanji, but it's stroke order, other kanjis' stroke order, and several new words per kanji.
- Do I memorize the individual meanings of kanji?
- Should I memorize all the common readings of individual kanji?
- How do I effectively memorize a kanji's stroke order?
- What about vocabulary written in kanji?
I write the word in kanji on one side of a notecard, and the hiragana reading plus the English meaning on the other side. I look at the kanji side, and make sure I know both the English meaning of the word, and the hiragana reading of it. I then write the kanji a few times in a notebook and go on to the next one. If I don't know the meaning of a word, then I make sure to review that one more often. I tend to memorize in batches of 6-12 words, and then move on to the next batch. As I accumulate words that I have lots of trouble with, I'll memorize a batch of the trouble makers separately from the rest.
I've found that studying this way increases my vocabulary, allows me to memorize stroke order and the various readings of a kanji, and the individual meaning of a kanji. Frequently, vocabulary includes kanji that I am studying, and kanji that I have not yet studied. I try to learn the stroke order of all the kanji in a word I am studying, although I don't feel the need to learn the meaning or the readings of kanji that I haven't gotten to yet. I can usually discern some meaning anyways, and I figure I will get to that kanji in the future.
The only disadvantage to this method is how long it takes to get through a group of kanji, since I am not only memorizing the kanji, but it's stroke order, other kanjis' stroke order, and several new words per kanji.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
My studying lifestyle
I've used several books and materials to study. While I find watching anime to be a fun diversion, it really doesn't expand my vocabulary very much. I've picked up a few words here and there, but even while watching an English movie subtitled in English, I tend to read more than I listen. It's even worse with Japanese dialogue and english subtitles.
While in Japan, we used books called "Minna no Nihongo". They provide a lot of good vocabulary, and are my primary vocabulary studybooks. In addition to their extensive and logically progressive vocabulary, each chapter has a grammar explanation section. Books one and two have enough vocabulary and grammar for one to be very proficient in Japanese.
I've recently took an interest in the "Japanese in Mangaland" series. They provide better explanations for Japanese grammar and vocab than any I have seen so far. The authors are clearly very familiar with both languages, and have an good understanding of how to teach Japanese.
At the University of Washington, anybody can take classes from something called the "Experimental College." One of the classes is a Japanese conversation class, which is about 8-10 weeks of 2 hour sessions (once a week). I'd recommend looking into your local college/university for classes that anyone can easily sign up and take. I took the Japanese conversational class about three times, and learned a lot. It's great not only to hear Japanese spoken by a native speaker, but also to meet a group of friends who are all interested in learning Japanese.
I was able to find a wonderful private tutor through www.craigslist.com . She has done everything from translation, to ambassadorial work, to negotiations between American and Japanese companies. I am very lucky to have been able to study with someone who can explain everything from coarse anime-speech to the kind of talking that one must use with a prime minister.
I've been using an online tool called "Flash My Brain" ( www.flashmybrain.com ). Basically, it is an online flashcard program that lets me fill out my own flashcards, arrange them into decks, then use them from any computer connected to the internet. Very convenient!
My favorite dictionary is also online. ( http://www.j-prep.com/reference/ ). It is great since I can look up words using english, romaji, kanji, katakana and hiragana.
Finally, my school offers to setup people from the Seattle area with foreign exchange students. I was able to meet with a Japanese student for a quarter, a wonderful experience!
Probably the most difficultly I've had is figuring out a good curriculum to stick to in order to study. I jump around between studying vocab, learning kanji, and trying to find people to talk to in order to better my conversational skills. On the one hand, I feel like with enough vocabulary I should be able to express myself very well, even without super-advanced grammatical knowledge. On the other hand, if I could just learn enough kanji to be able to read Japanese books, then my ability to pickup new vocabulary should increase substantially. Unfortunately kanji is very difficult for me, and I don't have a very good way of studying it yet.
I should add that the tools, services, books, and classes I mention are all things that I use or have used, and that I am not affiliated with them in any professional capacity. I just want to get the word out for people in similar situations to me (and maybe people can suggest to me how best to study on my own).
While in Japan, we used books called "Minna no Nihongo". They provide a lot of good vocabulary, and are my primary vocabulary studybooks. In addition to their extensive and logically progressive vocabulary, each chapter has a grammar explanation section. Books one and two have enough vocabulary and grammar for one to be very proficient in Japanese.
I've recently took an interest in the "Japanese in Mangaland" series. They provide better explanations for Japanese grammar and vocab than any I have seen so far. The authors are clearly very familiar with both languages, and have an good understanding of how to teach Japanese.
At the University of Washington, anybody can take classes from something called the "Experimental College." One of the classes is a Japanese conversation class, which is about 8-10 weeks of 2 hour sessions (once a week). I'd recommend looking into your local college/university for classes that anyone can easily sign up and take. I took the Japanese conversational class about three times, and learned a lot. It's great not only to hear Japanese spoken by a native speaker, but also to meet a group of friends who are all interested in learning Japanese.
I was able to find a wonderful private tutor through www.craigslist.com . She has done everything from translation, to ambassadorial work, to negotiations between American and Japanese companies. I am very lucky to have been able to study with someone who can explain everything from coarse anime-speech to the kind of talking that one must use with a prime minister.
I've been using an online tool called "Flash My Brain" ( www.flashmybrain.com ). Basically, it is an online flashcard program that lets me fill out my own flashcards, arrange them into decks, then use them from any computer connected to the internet. Very convenient!
My favorite dictionary is also online. ( http://www.j-prep.com/reference/ ). It is great since I can look up words using english, romaji, kanji, katakana and hiragana.
Finally, my school offers to setup people from the Seattle area with foreign exchange students. I was able to meet with a Japanese student for a quarter, a wonderful experience!
Probably the most difficultly I've had is figuring out a good curriculum to stick to in order to study. I jump around between studying vocab, learning kanji, and trying to find people to talk to in order to better my conversational skills. On the one hand, I feel like with enough vocabulary I should be able to express myself very well, even without super-advanced grammatical knowledge. On the other hand, if I could just learn enough kanji to be able to read Japanese books, then my ability to pickup new vocabulary should increase substantially. Unfortunately kanji is very difficult for me, and I don't have a very good way of studying it yet.
I should add that the tools, services, books, and classes I mention are all things that I use or have used, and that I am not affiliated with them in any professional capacity. I just want to get the word out for people in similar situations to me (and maybe people can suggest to me how best to study on my own).
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Vocabulary Studying Method
Learning a language is a daunting task. I realized at the onset that I would have to quickly find an efficient way of studying, or be doomed. Trying to memorize a whole chapter's worth of words just wasn't working for me. I would write the words down on flashcards and just attempt to memorize them all at once, but I realized that while some words came very quickly, most did not. On top of that, there were a few that I just couldn't remember.
Okay, I'd like to take an opportunity to rant a little here. Whats the deal with books that put lots of similar words together in the same chapter... for instance, to open, to close, to turn on, to turn off. Putting a bunch of similar seeming words and their opposites together into one group of words to study messes with my brain. Am I the only one for whom this seems to make things extra difficult?
Anyways, back to the studying methodology. It dawned on me that I could memorize small batches of words and build up from there. Now the way I study is to take a stack of notecards, and take the first six. I memorize those, put them aside in a pile (I'll call it the "memorized pile"), and take the next six. I then memorize those, and go back to the memorized pile to review them and make sure I have forgotten any. If I have forgotten some, I put them aside in a "forgotten pile", and then put all the memorized cards up to this point into the memorized pile. I then take six more, and memorize them. I then go back through the memorized pile and make sure I haven't forgotten any, and if I have then I put them in the forgotten pile. I keep doing this until all I am left with are the two stacks, memorized and forgotten. I then repeat the process with just the forgotten cards. Once I complete this if there are any really difficult stragglers left over, I focus on studying them for a couple minutes, then mix the cards up again and repeat until I don't have any more problems.
Okay, I'd like to take an opportunity to rant a little here. Whats the deal with books that put lots of similar words together in the same chapter... for instance, to open, to close, to turn on, to turn off. Putting a bunch of similar seeming words and their opposites together into one group of words to study messes with my brain. Am I the only one for whom this seems to make things extra difficult?
Anyways, back to the studying methodology. It dawned on me that I could memorize small batches of words and build up from there. Now the way I study is to take a stack of notecards, and take the first six. I memorize those, put them aside in a pile (I'll call it the "memorized pile"), and take the next six. I then memorize those, and go back to the memorized pile to review them and make sure I have forgotten any. If I have forgotten some, I put them aside in a "forgotten pile", and then put all the memorized cards up to this point into the memorized pile. I then take six more, and memorize them. I then go back through the memorized pile and make sure I haven't forgotten any, and if I have then I put them in the forgotten pile. I keep doing this until all I am left with are the two stacks, memorized and forgotten. I then repeat the process with just the forgotten cards. Once I complete this if there are any really difficult stragglers left over, I focus on studying them for a couple minutes, then mix the cards up again and repeat until I don't have any more problems.
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