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 technique. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technique. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)